Google may be creating its own M1 CPU rival for Chromebooks

Just like Apple with its homegrown M1 chip, Google may be building its own Arm-based CPU to run Chromebooks, according a recent news reports.

Citing three different unnamed sources, Nikkei Asia said Google is building its own processor for use in laptops and tablets running ChromeOS, with a targeted release date of 2023.

Chromebooks have been tearing up sales charts and dominating in schools due to their low cost, easy maintenance, and close paring with Google services. In fact, laptops using ChromeOS have been slowly eating into Microsoft’s Windows share of the market pie, and now actually outsell MacBooks.

The vast majority of Chromebooks run Intel’s lower-cost x86 chips but it’s not the only player. AMD has had decent success in ChromeOS as well of late. There are also numerous Chrombooks running Arm-based chips from MediaTek and Qualcomm available. At one point, even Nvidia offered its Arm-based Tegra on Chromebooks. Intel is still considered the largest player though, so a move by Google to introduce its own in-house design from Chromebooks could signal a shakeup of things to come—especially so hot on the heels of Apple’s own M1 transition.